Gwyntaan gave a soft hiss as the disinfectant went on, but he did his best not to flinch. Back when they'd had a full crew, he'd seen other crew members react a lot worse, particularly the gruff engineer - who had quite a colorful vocabulary, to put it mildly. The hiss shifted into a soft sigh as the stinging eased, and he started thinking about those they'd left behind.

Did he regret following Captain? Not in the slightest. He didn't understand the pressures that had led the human to this course, and he did miss the others - particularly the twins, who always seemed to know exactly where it itched - but his closest 'family' was Tesla. Ever since he had become part of the airship's complement, he had recognized Captain as the one in charge, even as the others had drifted away.

The dragon curled up on the flight deck, reassured by the familiar sounds of take-off preparations. It took longer than it had with all hands, but cunning alterations had made it possible for one man to run the whole operation. The solid deck was also comforting, especially with the knowledge that they were heading back through that 'portal'. It had not been fun trying to fly through that on his own.

Tesla was encouraged by Gwyn behaving passably when the disinfectant was applied; he would probably need to do that a few more times to make sure the wound was clean, probably once a day until it healed, but overall, it was not a terribly bad situation. He nattered on out loud, knowing that Gwyn didn't exactly talk back, knowing that it was uncertain how much converation Gwyn actually understoood, but Tesla needed to talk.

“Right. Well, at least we're getting off this world before anything worse happens. I'm not staying in a rat-infested glowing hell-hole.” He continued talking as he finished getting prep done for take off; he wished he could actually put Gwyntaan to work doing something, but he wasn't sure what parts of launch-prep one could even teach to a dragon. He got things going, a decent temp in the boiler room, calibrated the chemical mixture's ratio in the blimp portion of his ship, checked on various bits of equipment...

...and he was ready to go. He got back to the wheel, and he piloted the ship up into the twinkling night sky. Time to offski! He piloted the thing with some difficulty, not used to manning the thing on his own, used to having easy adjustments made to certain things down below when he wanted, and he flew them back in the direction of the portal. It didn't take long to find it; the same looming swirl that had drawn him in in the first place was there, albeit smaller, but it grew larger at the approach of the ship, and they drifted through.

Time to figure out where they were going...he called out to Gwyn, “Looks like we're going to have to mess with that damn panel!” They were in that odd floating environment of the portal area again, and the captain needed to chart a course. He looked at the symbols and other things via a spyglass, and he decided to make things easy. Gwyn could do pattern recognition, he figured. He scribbled down the input code he wanted and made his way to Gwyn. He called, “Gwyn, I need you to hit the symbols in order on that panel that appear on the paper, okay?”

Gwyn cocked his head and peered at the symbols. Like so many of his interpretations, his 'literacy' was limited to what he had observed from the crew. For example, the symbol 'E' meant 'God dammit, I told you to throw another load in the furnace!' and anything with a currency symbol attached to it meant someone was going to be yelling soon. These symbols were unfamiliar, but all he had to do was remember them and copy them. Giving them meanings wasn't necessary.

As he launched himself from the deck, he was struck by the same disorienting feelings that he had experienced on his first trip through the portal. Direction was all relative - the ship was constant, as was the strange device by the portal, but he had the eerie feeling that anything else in this realm was completely mutable. Half-seen flashes sparked at the edges of his vision, some dilating like staring pupils before dwindling to pinpricks and fading. Size even seemed relative. He remembered the gate being barely wide enough to pass through before, but now it dwarfed him as he hovered in front of the console.

No more delay. Delicately, he picked out the symbols he had seen on the paper, and the portal blazed to life. Gwyntaan arrowed back to the ship - purely because he wanted to report the success of his mission, of course.

As soon as Gwyn was safely on the ship, Tesla piloted his vessel towards the now-open portal; it was time to see what else Fate had in store for them. He wasn't sure if the new world would be any better than this godawful green-tinted and glowing one, but at this point, he was willing to take anything...well, anything except to return to that wretched Victorian world he had once called home. He would never return; that much was decided.

But with a burst of light, they were through the portal...and into a totally different world. Tesla called to Gwyn, “You did it, buddy!” The world that met his goggled eyes was shocking to his gaze.

Towering buildings dominated the landscape, taller than anything he had ever seen. They had to have at least one-hundred stories, cutting like daggers into the belly of a grim and dark sky rife with clouds. The number of windows and lights in those buildings practically looked like stars. There was a fine mist coming down from the sky, a dreary rain, and Tesla looked for somewhere to land. He took a turn away from the big buildings; he wanted something a litle more isolated. He saw a few brief signs here and there, the word “Corp” mentioned an awful lot on those signs, and he could practically smell capitalism in the air.

And yet as uniform and bland as this stark and geometrical world seemed, Tesla felt like there was magic in this place. He would need to make contacts quickly; as he looked down from his ship, the people were so tiny as to look like ants. He was sure their vessel had been seen by people as well. But what to concern himself with? What would he have to offer a potential ally? He couldn't tell them about the portal, surely?

The portal softly closed shut in the sky behind them. The Captain was worried how many might have seen it. There was honking and other noises from below; the streets, so straight and well-defined, were crammed with traffic. He piloted the ship with great effort to the outskirts of the city, trying to find somewhere out of the way. How would he go about hiding a whole ship? He called to Gwyn, “When we land, scout!”

He steered the ship a few miles away from the city; he and Gwyn would go in after getting a night's rest. He was sure he saw an old quarry that would serve his purposes; he got it down on the ground without a problem.

Unlike the previous world, this one teemed with life. Strange smells, and not all of them pleasant, but there wasn't the same level of ill health that he had sensed before. At the very least, the foliage didn't glow or move by itself - something that Gwyntaan found encouraging. There were small scuttling things that smelled like food, as well as larger stalking things that could be competition and high-soaring things that could be either. There were humans, too - or at least things that smelled near enough to them.

As they landed, Gwyntaan took to the air. For the time being, he didn't approach the brightly-lit city. Even back in their home world, he had left such places to Captain and the others. The scrubby outskirts, where humanity became sparse and wilderness began, were the places where the unusual dangers were more likely. That was where the scavengers lived, both animal and human.

As Tesla had surmised, their arrival had attracted a certain amount of attention from both. Those that fed on the dross of civilization had initially scattered, but they were beginning to recover their courage and investigate. Thankfully, the steep walls of the quarry provided a certain protection. Any intruders would have to either fly in or come down the zig-zag road that had once been used by excavating equipment.

When the dragon landed again, he chirruped and settled himself facing that single entry point. Things were safe for the moment, but he wanted to ensure that Captain knew where 'visitors' were likely to come from.

Tesla was setting things up in his ship; he felt this world had potential to allow him to stay for a while. He was unsure for how long, but this was a far cry from the desolation of the glowing green world. His only hope was that the inhabitants of this world weren't lucky enough or advanced enough to manipulate the tech he had used to access the portal. Then again....the Captain was a little vague on how he was actually getting so lucky in the first place. It felt like something was due to go wrong.

The gray and dark quarry stretched around like a protective cocoon; Tesla spent the time going through his ship logs, stowing away the "cargo" from that barren world for study soon to ensure Gwyn wouldn't get ill, and he made notes about the sequences used to get there and the one used to get here. He had a few more theories about which combinations opened which kinds of worlds, but he wouldn't be sure until he tried more. Of course, the entire point of this search was to find a new home; he didn't exactly want to be stuck traveling for too long. Who knew what kinds of complications came from interworld travel? He didn't, that was for damn sure.

He heard Gwyn's call, that familiar chirrup, and he wrapped up his organization of things on board and his brief writings, stashing his notebook under his captain's chair. He bounded out to take a look, and he noted the direction Gwyn was facing. He saw the zig-zagged road and nodded, saying, "Yeah, I'm thinking what you're thinking. Anyone wants to oust us, they'll have to come from above like we did or use the road. Have to do something about that road at some point." He ruffled the top of Gwyn's head playfully and said, "But we need to get some sleep. We'll start exploring this place tomorrow. Come on, dragon, let's get in the ship and lock 'er up for the night."

Little did he know that some distance away, a woman had seen the ship emerge from the portal; not just eerie light and shapes like most, but the entirety of the airship. That was the benefit of looking though a telescope at the time. Standing in the shadows of her apartment in Seattle, she slowly stepped back from the telescope and said, "What have we here?" On went a coat, some supplies stuffed into a bag, and she was out the door to investigate...

As Gwyntaan and Tesla settled in for the night, Seattle was still a hive of activity. The streets were crowded with traffic, despite the rain, and there was another kind of traffic humming through the air.

>>>>>(Anyone else scope the light show tonight?)>>>>>(You talking that simshow by the Needle? Heard the lights were wiz, but the band was drek.)>>>>>(Nah, not a fragging sim. Over Midtown. Don't you bleeders ever look up anymore?)>>>>>(Saw something about it on the newsfeed. Some kind of corp testing.)>>>>>(Thought they had to do that out in the wastes? At least fifty klicks from civilized areas...)>>>>>(Depends on what they're testing. Just count your fingers and toes when you wake up in the morning.)>>>>>(That'll depend on what arm I've got plugged in.)

Along with other conversations, the countless bits of data skittered through the electronic consciousness that served corp and scavenger alike. Both corp and scavenger gleaned what they could from it - time, location, descriptions, theories - and most of all, determined whether or not the data was at all useful. Although the chatter usually contained a lot of dross, unusual events were typically either good news or bad news for somebody, and that 'somebody' was likely to pay handsomely to know which.

She was sifting through every bit of data available on that light in the sky; most people were agreeing that it was just testing from a corp, but she wasn't convinced. A runner wasn't going to be able to investigate this alone; it looked too weird. Ja X, a slender human woman of pale skin and strange gleaming cerulean eyes that looked a bit too tech, wasn't usually inclined to go chasing fallen stars; she had seen more than enough of her old friends turn into that very thing over the course of their lives. But this was too weird to ignore.

She would need to contact a fixer to get the latest on that thing that fell from the sky. She was pretty sure there was a favor or two owed. She knew she'd have to pay him; he would only take certified credsticks. It was a pain in the ass. But a message fired off in the A on the Matrix and a sole response later floating before her eyes told her that he did know something, and there was a price. But he gave her a nifty tidbit before then:

Quarry.

It was going to be an interesting day for Ja X, even more interesting for whatever had landed in some sort of quarry...

Captain Tesla woke up the next day feeling bushed. He stretched out and for once removed his gleaming goggles to reveal eyes that were paler than paper. He looked around his ship, found where Gwyn had slept for the night, and he stretched out. He looked out of a window; it was raining. This world seemed much better than the other one; he wasn't sure how long he wanted to stay, though. He would still need to go to a large city. He wasn't sure if he should, though; from what little he'd seen, this was a very populated world. He coughed and grunted, saying to Gwyn, “Hey you. Think we should go make some new friends in the big city or fortify location here?” He wasn't sure Gwyn would get the complexity of the question, but it still felt right to ask.

Gwyn opened one crystal-blue eye, then stretched - almost cat-like except for the slight spread of his wings. He was damp from the rain, since he'd spent the night within sight of the raised gangplank, but it wasn't as bad as some of the storms they'd weathered back in their previous home. He'd even flown in worse, as long as there wasn't too much lightning.

He turned his thoughts to Tesla's question - not so much to understanding it, since 'city' and even 'fortify' were familiar concepts, but how to convey his preferences. His experience with cities was limited - the people that had owned him before Tesla had brought him into one when he was handed over to Captain, but since then he'd had little reason to visit one. Usually, he was left at the airship, especially once the rest of the crew had drifted away. Here, however, he was a little reluctant to let Captain go alone.

On the other hand, there wasn't a whole lot more that they could do to fortify the quarry any further - it would be easy enough to keep watch, either from the deck or from the air, and the weapons they had at their disposal should make any intruder think twice after a warning shot. Gwyn himself had scared away a brigand or five simply by standing on deck and yawning.

He nosed at the human's hand. The important thing in his mind was that they not get separated.

Captain Tesla smiled gently when Gwyn nudged his hand. With a feeling of tenderness towards this, his oldest and perhaps most loyal dear friend, he gave a rough pat on the head. The pat contained far more feeling than anything he could bother to say to Gwyntaan. He took the nudge on the hand to mean “Let's go together.” He grinned and said, “Come on, then. Let's get a move-on, explore the area. This world seems more civilized than that last one thankfully.” He kitted out with eveything he might need—some stuff to eat, bit of water, a few convenient steam-based omnitools, and he gestured for Gwyn. He set off out of the quarry.

That next day, Ja X had resolved to track the trajectory of what had come out of that light in the sky. After a meeting with a fixer (who happily relieved her of credsticks for a miserly amount of information), she had a passable idea that it was a ship of sorts that had come through the other night. She got up and went; she had a Yamaha Growler, a decent motocross bike that was pretty good for light runs as well.

Bit noisy, though.

She sped off to the quarry, just as Captain Tesla and Gwyn had left it.

More than one vehicle was on the road out towards the quarry, but the second one was quieter than the Growler by far. Not that it was supposed to be. Sitting on the edge of the pavement was what looked like a long-cab cream-colored pickup truck, its hood up and steam rising from the cooling system. A head-sized orb hovered in front of it, diagnostic lights flashing before dispensing a cloud of something that left a thick coat of frost on the entire front half of the vehicle.

For the time being, Gwyntaan loped alongside Tesla. He was capable of moving at a reasonable clip on the ground, and for the moment, speed and surveillance didn't seem as important. It was a trip into town - something that the Captain had been doing on his own for a few seasons now. If anything, the dragon's attitude was one of anticipation of a rare treat. This didn't mean that he was completely distracted by the prospect, though. Among other things, he was scouting the rugged landscape around the quarry for potential meals and potential competition.

Ja X hadn't remotely expected the site that beheld her when she arrived at the quarry, her Growler rumbling under her like some sort of great big dog. She was fairly convinced it wasn't running as well as it should, but she'd have to get it checked out later. It would be a hell of a problem if it started acting up now; she was far too concerned with this sudden arrival to Seattle and what that could mean. And there would be a lot of money in it for the person who figured all this nonsense out, she knew. Information was far more valuable than the well-being of her Growler, but she didn't want the thing to die on her before she could investigate. It sputtered to a stop as she drove about as far in as she dared into the area.

In the distance she could see a masked figure (were those goggles?) and some sort of beastie by him. Out came a weapon--she didn't want to take any chances. Little did she know that another vehicle was on it's way to the locale; Ja X didn't have a lot of time to get a handle on things. She called out "This quarry is the property of the Seattle Mining Conglomerate! Who are you, and why are you trespassing?" She hoped that if she kept a quaver out of her voice, she could sound like she really was an official. Besides, there was no such thing as the 'Seattle Mining Conglomerate.' She knew all the big corporate movers and shakers, and she hadn't wanted to risk shouting out a name that a stranger might actually recognize.

...and what was that beast by the man, upon closer look? It looked...menacing...

Threat. This woman was a threat. Gwyntaan could see that much in the way she held the strange device that she pointed at them. It didn't look quite like the Captain's gun, but it was close enough for him to discern its purpose. He glanced quickly at the Captain, and then back at the newcomer. Captain wanted to make 'new friends'. It would be bad form to do anything too drastic, though, so he decided to return display for display.

Sitting back on his haunches, the little dragon mantled his wings and emitted a hiss worthy of one of the great constrictors. Anyone trying to pick a fight with his Captain would have more than the human to deal with.

Ja X didn't notice the other newcomer; that Growler she had was loud enough to where any potential observers, if they stayed back a ways, could stay hidden with relative ease. Ja X wasn't looking to stay hidden, though; she wanted some info on what was going on, needed the creds, needed something like an edge, which hopefully this would provide. Her weapon in hand, she was about to shout out another statement to the dark tall stranger in the goggles...

...and then that beast. Ja X saw it. A dragon.

A dragon. There were people who would pay a tidy sum for information that this creature existed here, that a dragon had come through with some sort of planar stranger. She took a breath, though, because that hiss from the critter was no joke. She smiled, her soft features hardening into a mask of nervousness, and she blurted, "Nice dragon. Goooood dragon." Her weapon angled more towards it, though; she was far more afraid of that beast than the goggled guy.

The goggled guy, though, decided to speak up. He called in passable but accented English (a British accent, possibly?), "I am Captain Tesla, foraging explorer and adventurer, seeking a new world to call a home. Although I best advise you to put that weapon down, miss. Gwyntaan doesn't take kindly to overt threats of that nature." Ja X blurted, "Gwyntaan? It has a name?" She didn't want to paint this dragon as a monster--dragons could be exceptionally intelligent and powerful (hell, most could use computer systems far better than most people could). Many could even take human form...but this dragon wasn't from around here, and Ja X had no idea of it's capabilities.

The Captain nudged her gently, murmuring, "I did say to drop the weapon. I suppose I should have been more clear." He was trying to be a gentleman about it...but he was tempted to let Gwyn go take it to teach her a lesson, let him play with her a bit to remind her not to draw immediately upon someone just because they were a stranger. And it would impress upon her that just because he was not familiar with her world of blinking lights and humming prodigious electricity didn't mean he would be a pushover.

He raised an eyebrow at Gwyn and jerked his head to the weapon Ja X held...

Gwyntaan glanced up at the Captain and gave a distinct nod. While he was perfectly capable of inflicting serious damage on the woman confronting them, Captain had been specifically talking about the weapon, and so his attack was aimed at disarming Ja X instead. Like a scaled battering ram, he launched himself head-first towards the shoulder of her weapons-hand. At the very least, that should throw her aim off, and hopefully send the weapon flying. If he was lucky, it might even knock her to the ground.

A few klicks away, well out of range of the quarry, the pickup truck roared back to life. The orb zipped back into the cab, while the man behind the wheel gave a colorful (if impossible) description of both machines' lineages. The break-down had cost him valuable time, since information could be and was often sold multiple times if the market for it was good. He'd settle for salvage, though. After all, he made his living putting things together that shouldn't work - but did.

Ja X shrieked as Gwyn launched himself at her. She wasn't fast enough to move out of the way, and she wasn't strong enough to resist the rather strong knock against her shoulder. She tumbled straight to the ground, but it was enough to cause her weapon to misfire, sending a shot wildly out into the quarry. A distant ping! revealed it had probably struck machinery of some kind. Tesla let out a small noise of satisfaction at the sudden troucing of the newcomer, but he did reply simply, his voice apologetic, "I did tell you to drop the weapon. Two civilized folk aren't going to be able to talk when one has a deadly tool pointed at the other, you know."

The woman trembled and muttered, feeling bruises rising already on her shoulder. This was going disastrously already. The shot was bound to be heard by anyone who might be nearby...and Ja X was paranoid others might be investigating this or might try to poach finding these two from her. Information was only as valuable as its recency and relevancy...

She stood up, edging carefully away from Gwyntaan, and said, "I think we need to talk about what you're doing here and how you got here....Captain." The gun was out of her hand after the misfire; she'd let it go rather than risk Gwyn biting her or mauling her.

Tesla sauntered over and picked up her weapon, intrigued by it. He turned to Gwyn and said, "Scout the area, Gwyn. If this woman is here, there might be more."